Columbia University - Columbian Yearbook (New York, NY)

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jfuretnuth .0 HE interests and sympathies of Columbia University are as wide as 'S the world from which its student-body is drawn. It is not possible QQ: N nor would it be becoming at a timerlike the present to .dwell entirely upon our own personal and institutional interests, ambitions and un- dertakings. VVe must take account of the fact that for the better may ' L part of two years the whole world has been involved in a gigantic military struggle and that there is no reasonable prospect of its termination in the near future. Indeed there is every likelihood that the world-war will con- tinue for two years more, and there are those who think that, like the struggle of Europe against Napoleon, the contest may drag its slow length out over a decade or even longer. The trained and educated youth of the world, those upon whom the immediate future of civilization and of culture must depend, do not just now see eye to eye or mind to mind. They are divided into hostile, warring and hating camps. Every evil passion is being sedulously roused for aid in effective combat, and the gentler virtues, the graces and the arts and deeds of Christian kindliness and helpfulness are forgotten. For the time at least, and let us hope for ever, American youth stand out- side the limits of this titanic struggle. They are not involved in it but they can- not be indifferent to it. They must watch with apparent helplessness the wreck of the ideals which they have been taught to cherish, and the disappointment of the plans and ambitions which they had hoped quickly to further and to carry forward. Yet this is no time for weakness or for hopelessness. The very inten- sity of the struggle and the splendid moral and intellectual qualities which individuals display in it are themselves good omens for the future. The end of the war will come, whether soon or late, and when it comes the door of op- portunity will open to American youth as it has never opened before. A ruined and an overturned world will be hungering for leadership and for service. It will need numberless men trained in letters, inscience, in the arts, in law, in medicine, in architecture, in teaching and in business methods to go out as build- ers of a new temple of civilization which, let us hope, will be so strong and so well founded that no liars, however powerful, can ever again overturn it. Just now our individual interests, our organizations, our pleasures, our exercise, our sports are all estimated in terms of their personal reference to us. But they be- come useful and significant in larger ways when we, being helped and developed by them, use what we have gained in the larger world of affairs for the upbuild- ing of those things that are now torn down or endangered. It is with the upmost conhdence that I look forward to the constructive in- Huence of the sons of Columbia, not only at home but abroad, in all parts of the world when the war shall end and the light of a new era in the history of civilization shall dispel the clouds and darkness of our present gloom. Christmas Eve, 1915 A! : Z JM di